The Death Star, the mega-weapon featured prominently in the first Star Wars trilogy of movies, is a moon-sized space station that is capable of destroying planets, as evidenced by the destruction of Alderaan, shown in the video to your right

I will argue though that while the Death Star is able to blow up rocky Earth sized planets, the Death Star would NOT be able to blow up a gas giant planet the size of Jupiter or even Saturn, for the reasons stated below...

1) Atmospheric resistance and wind issues

The Death Star as we all know operates by firing giant lasers at the planet targeted for destruction. The first problem for why a Death Star would therefore be unable to destroy a gas giant planet is because atmospheric fluctuations, temperature changes, etc. damages the strength and trajectory of a laser, as stated in the link below.

The Atmosphere of Jupiter on the other hand has an estimated heights of over 600 miles, 12 times higher than that of Earths. https://en.wikipedia.org...

More importantly, the wind speed of the atmosphere on Earth ranges from 0 to 100 meters per second, or 0 to 233 miles per hour in extreme circumstanceshttp://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov...

Jupiter's wind speeds though can AVERAGE almost 400 miles per hour, and wind speeds on other gas giant planets like Saturn can even climb up to 500 meters per second, over a THOUSAND miles per hour. If you include Uranus and Neptune as gas giants, the potential increases to a whopping 1500 miles per hour

This would create substantial problems for a Death Star intending to target a gas giant planet for destruction, because not only does the laser have to travel through a larger atmosphere to hit the center (and thus be more prone to lose power along the way), but the atmospheric fluctuations on gas giants are extremely more powerful than those found on smaller rocky planets like Earth or Alderaan, which would directly compromise a 'normal' blast from a Death Star to less lethal levels. The power from a Death Star blast would therefore have to be increased dramatically, to an impossible degree, which is where the next argument comes in

2) Power needed to blow up a gas giant by a single Death Star would be unreachable

When a White House petition asking for the construction of the Death Star went viral, one scientist who actually saw the petition commented that the amount of energy a Death Star needs to blow up a planet is:

The energy needed to destroy Earth would be 100 Million Billion Billion Watts, and no, im not making that up, thats the actual estimaete:https://en.wikipedia.org...

So because the energy needed to destroy a planet is directly correlated with the mass of the planet, the amount of energy needed to blow up a gas giant would be exponentially larger due to how much more mass there is in the gas giant than there is a smaller, rocky planet. While the Death Star can already produce the energy needed to blow up a small rocky planet, the amount of energy needed to blow up a gas giant would be too large for it to overcome. Multiple Death Stars firing all at once may do the trick, but putting the collective power of dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of Death Stars into a single Death Star is likely impossible to achieve.

3) It would be hard for a Death Star to hit the core of a Gas Giant

As stupid as this sounds, hear me out. Gas giants are known for not having solid, stable cores, its part of the reason why they are called 'Gas Giants' and not just 'Big a$$ planets'... The Death Star works by pinpointing the heart of a planets core and blasting it to smithereens, taking the rest of the planet out with the core in the ensuing blast. But pinpointing the heart of a gas giant could prove problematic since its not even known if gas giants have a solid or liquid core, it is in fact speculated it could be some combination of both, as explained below

With the high winds and large atmospheres of gas giants taken into account, a shot from the Death Star could be diffracted enough to the point that it misses whatever is in the core of the planet completely, and instead pass through the planet completely. Even if you do hit the core of a gas giant, because the cores of gas giants are speculated to not even exist in a stable form, the Death Star blast could pass through the planet anyways since the core of a gas giant is not the same as the core of a rocky earth-like planet the Death Star is normally unleashed upon.

4) Laser intensity decreases over distance

This relates back to argument 1 about the atmospheric issues posed by gas giants. Lasers lose their power the more distance the laser travels.

The problem this poses to a Death Star vs a gas giant scenario is that even in favorable atmospheric conditions on the gas giant, a laser beam can still lose power and intensity the further it travels since intensity naturally decays over distance. As stated in the link above, the only way to compensate for this deterioration is to increase the power of the laser. Therefore, in order for a Death Star to be able to blow up a Jupiter sized planet, the Death Star would have to be able to harness and unleash (safely) MORE then what is actually needed to blow up Jupiter to compensate for the intensity decay of a Death Star blast.

Dude it would totally work, haven't you seen the movie, that is a real working model that they filmed it on. George Lucas didn't sacrifice a planet for his movie just so that an idiot like you can make a stupid argument that it couldn't, when there is a recorded proof it can.

"Dude it would totally work, that is a real working model that they filmed it on"

Well duh, of course Alderaan was a real planet that was blown up by the Death Star, that's not what is being disputed here though

"George Lucas didn't sacrifice a planet for his movie just so that an idiot like you can make a stupid argument that it couldn't"

It wasn't George Lucas who ordered the destruction of Alderaan, dipstick, it was Grand Moff Tarkin.... I literally posted the clip from the live-action documentary where he ordered Alderaan to be destroyed.... Pay attention

"there is a recorded proof it can"

There is recorded proof that it can destroy a small rocky planet like Earth, NOT a gas giant like Jupiter though. The Empire has never had reason to target a Gas Giant with a Death Star, but i'm arguing that if they ever had any reason to, that the Death Star wouldn't work.

Hahaah, we all know it was Han Solo that shot the Death Star first. The quantum mechanics of the Death Star super blaster could easily destroy a gas giant. The bottle conspiracy of 1989 proves this. And it was actually admiral alla Akbar who alongside Osama and George bush who told them to destroy Jupiter. It is also proven that the Rays from the Death Star blaster cause autism and Daryl Vader had a serious case of it before he died.

"The quantum mechanics of the Death Star super blaster could easily destroy a gas giant"

Im arguing that it cant, and have provided evidence suggesting that it cant

"The bottle conspiracy of 1989 proves this"

The Bottle Conspiracy of 1989 was a hoax perpetuated by a man who spent his free time waving his penis at oncoming traffic, it has no bearing on the functionality of the Death Star

"And it was actually admiral alla Akbar who alongside Osama and George bush who told them to destroy Jupiter"

Yeah, for the oil, I know. This isn't first grade history here con, stop preaching to the choir. They were told to destroy Jupiter but the attack was "OFFICIALLY" called off because it might hurt their re-election chances. Im here to argue that the true reason may be because the Death Star cant blow up a gas giant planet, like Jupiter

"It is also proven that the Rays from the Death Star blaster cause autism"

Oh here you go again with that anti-blaster nonsense.... People pulled that same crap with vaccines 40,000 years ago, only to find out that vaccines DONT cause Autism...... They cause cancer

Con brings up several points only somewhat related to the Death Star, but has failed to dispute ANY of the reasons I have provided suggesting that the Death Star would be unable to blow up a gas giant planet. Vote Pro

daryl vader is the co founder of the death star, you aren't fooling anyone. He created the autism beams but shortly got exposed to it and ended up giving autism to himself. His brother drath vader also was born with it but drank enough dew from a mountain he lived on in his early days to get himself out of it. A beam from the deathstar can be the normal or the special mode. The special mode is a toggle that you can do found on the death star HUD. As shown here: http://prntscr.com... This special mode is made up of mountain dew and osamas sweat, osama sweat reacts with the mountain dew to form saddam hussein bolts fast running energy into the death star, that is what powers the ship also. Now, the mixture mixes with what is in most gas giants commonly found in this universe which is made up of orange fanta . These react heavily with each other to create a reaction so intense it can blow all the doritos out of a cod players hand.

Reasons for voting decision: Not a vote bomb. Conduct to Pro because Con didn't even try to debate whereas Pro put much effort into his argument. Arguments to Pro because he made arguments based on scientific evidence whereas Con points to the movie for evidence unknowingly that Pro already used part of the movie to his advantage. S&G to Pro because Con consistently made spelling errors and failed to punctuate his arguments well, hindering the readability of his arguments. Sources to Pro because he used numerous reliable sources to back up his arguments using scientific evidence whereas Con only used one source which was only used to state who "Daryl Vader" is.